Daughter of the Refuge

Chapter Sixteen

Yes, I'm not dead. Life's tragically busy but the inspiration is flowing so I should be able to finish the book soon! We still have lots of plotline to get through but I'm sure it will be over before I know. I'll let y'all read now:) Enjoy! (Also, if you're a Les Misérables fan, you are immediately deemed as my fandom friend)

"Samantha! Samantha!" Katherine Pulitzer's voice rang out behind the dark-haired, street girl who halted mid-step at the urgency that flooded the journalist's words. 

"What is it, Kath?" She questioned, whirling around, barely escaping being plowed over by her friend. 

"I found something." Samantha narrowed her eyes at the statement, her mind racing with the possibilities of what could have sparked such a reaction from Katherine. 

"Is it-"

"It has to do with the Second Refuge." Katherine flipped open her notebook, the one that never left her side, to reveal a stack of files, each stuffed to their utmost with papers. Passing it to Samantha, she glanced up at the girl's look of skepticism. "Just read it, it's too much to explain."

So Samantha led Katherine back to Jada's house and the two seated themselves in the sitting room, each with a cup of warm coffee in their hands, and she began to shuffle through the file, confusion never once leaving her mind. 

From what she could understand of the file, eight years ago, three kids of well-known people in New York went missing, resulting in more than a few deaths and many interrogations. Samantha couldn't understand what the disappearances had to do with the Newsie attacks and the Second Refuge, but Katherine drew her attention to the dates of the disappearances. 

Michael Patrick Smith went missing on June 4th, 1891 after  his nanny had taken him out to Central Park. Professed by the nanny, she had been chatting with another mother when another child in the park began to scream. The nanny had turned to look for Michael, worried about the boy only to find nothing but a pair of boots left behind with a soundless scream of the three-year-old. 

Clara Arianna Williams went missing on June 5th, 1891 while her and her mother were out on a walk. Her mother was found three hours after they had left, unconscious in an alley far off the path that the two were known for taking, the five-year-old no where to be found. 

And finally, Jonathan Colby Hart, the disappearance that was immediately determined as a kidnapping when the two-year-old had been sighted being picked up by a tall man by three civilians on June 7th, 1891. His older brother had been watching him but had looked away when his friend had come to chat with him. The boy was never seen again. 

It was impossible to overlook the near-same dates of the kidnappings, as they had later been labeled. It was clear that whoever had kidnapped Michael Patrick Smith had been the same person to kidnap Clara Arianna Williams and Jonathan Colby Hart. But Samantha struggled to see the line between the three missing children from eight years ago to the issue of the Second Refuge and the Newsie attacks. 

"Don't you see," Katherine exclaimed, "it all adds up." She handed Samantha another file of papers before continuing. "My father began funding the Second Refuge eight years ago, two weeks before the kidnapping of these three children."

Samantha furrowed her brow, gazing down at the papers in her hand. "So ya think dat Snyder kidnapped three children an' has been holdin' dem in da Second Refuge fa eight years, a place dat is bein' privately funded by ya fadda?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying."

"But why? And what's da importance a these children?"

Katherine hummed, reached through the stack of files, drawing another one out and opened it. Samantha was beginning to think the girl had endless amounts of information pouring out of herself. "That was more difficult to uncover."